As reports about IAF carrying out a pre-dawn strike on a militant camp across the LoC trickled, the NIA on Tuesday raided the residences of JKLF chief Yasin Malik and moderate Hurriyat chairman Mirwaiz Umer, in Srinagar.
Reports said the National Investigation Agency (NIA) along with local police and paramilitary forces in heavy numbers cordoned off the residence of Malik in volatile Maisuma area near city centre at 7:30 am.
“The area was cordoned from every side and even media persons were not allowed to move in the area,” a police official said and added the searches were going on in the area. The raid was carried out even as the JKLF chief is being lodged at nearby Kothibagh police station since last two days.
As the raid on Malik’s house was going on, the NIA sleuths assisted by the police raided the Nigeen residence of Mirwaiz. They were carrying out searches when last reports came.
The NIA, probing alleged terror funding to Kashmiri separatists and militants have been conducting raids on the houses of separatist, their sympathisers and traders in Kashmir over the last almost two years in its bid to unearth the scam.
The premier national probe agency has arrested nearly a dozen people, including seven separatist leaders, a high-profile businessman and a son of Pakistan-occupied-Kashmir based Hizb-ul-Mujahideen chief Syed Salah-ud-Din. The NIA has also questioned octogenarian separatist leader Syed Ali Geelani's sons, Dr Nayeem and Naseem, though both have been let off after several rounds of interrogation in New Delhi.
The separatist leaders were booked in case No. RC 10/2017/NIA/DLI, who had been receiving funds through Hawala and causing disruption in the valley, burning schools, damaging public property and waging war against India.
The NIA had alleged that money was being raised to fund separatist and terror activities in J&K. The raids and arrests is part of NIA investigation in a case registered on 30 May 2017 in which the leader of the Pakistan-based Jamaat-ud-Dawa and banned terrorist outfit Lashkar-e-Taiba, Hafiz Saeed, was named as an accused.